1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automatically guided vehicles and, more particularly, it relates to a method and a system for controlling an automatically guided vehicle in which map information relating to the running route of the guided vehicle can be easily generated and running information to be supplied to the guided vehicle can be generated on the basis of the map information by designating a starting station and a terminal station.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In general, automatically guided vehicles are guided by light, magnetism, etc. through the use of, for example, guide lines and signal marks. FIG. 15 shows a model of a running route for a guided vehicle in which a guide line is laid on a running route and signal marks are provided on one or both sides of the guide line.
In the following example, a running route model is described for a case where the guided vehicle travels from a designated home station (hereinafter abbreviated as "HS") to a third station (hereinafter abbreviated as "ST3"). The guided vehicle receives running information corresponding to a sequence of signal marks and stores this running information in memory. That is, the guided vehicle stores running information as shown in Table 1 corresponding to signal marks SM1-SM5 in advance and receives information whenever a signal mark is detected, such that the guided vehicle runs according to the updated control information. Unfortunately, in this type of system, it is difficult or impossible to generate running information from a command instruction, such as, "Go from HS to ST3." In other words, it is difficult to derive running information from starting station-to-terminal station information (hereinafter also called "FROM-TO information" or abbreviated as "F/T information").
TABLE 1 ______________________________________ Signal Mark Sequence Control Information ______________________________________ SM1 Run at a high speed. SM2 Run at a low speed, turn to the right. SM3 Run at a high speed. SM4 Run at a low speed. SM5 Stop. ______________________________________
The following two methods are known as conventional techniques for generating running information from F/T information.